1 No. It's the OS that takes the time to boot up so it loads in layers, and each layer checks to make sure it is resident before loading the next one. As OS' become more sophisticated they will take longer to load - computers might get faster, but OS' just keep eating up those resources. There are ways to make it faster though... Faster hard drives (reduces the access time), more RAM, faster clock speed (2mhz - puleeze Harv, that's like having a prop plane in an age of jets), defragmenting your registry and drive, unloading all that crap that starts up (like all that printer software, messengers, etc). More stuff to load = slower loading times.

2 2 ghz even - might as well be 2 mhz these days :-D

3 My computer's processor is 166 times faster now, but it just does 166 times more in the same amount of time. I want it to do the same in 1/166th the time :-)

4 Here it comes.... alright, another reason why I own a Mac. Yes, the OS has to load on initial startup, which, by the way, takes less than 30 seconds on my old MacBook. When it's time to walk away from the laptop, I close the lid, it's off, sleeping. When it's time to work or look something up quickly, I open the lid, wait 1...2... it's on and ready to go, programs I was using already fired up, even Excel and Word. Pretty close to instant on for me. I reboot for core OS system updates. But rest assured, systems running on flash memory are coming soon and they'll be even more instant on for all OSs out there.

5 Ever try to run WinXP on a 233MHz PII? With 128MB RAM? Torture! Pure torture! I'm on a 1.2GHz lappy running Win2k and that loads fairly speedy. 'Stand-by' mode is nice too.

6 It is possible, but improbable. The OS would have to be hardware based (IE: on a chip) instead of on the hard drive. It's actually possible now, but it's expensive and a pain in the ass.